Medals

[CapnScurvy]

Thanks for getting back to me Jten. Sorry about the length of time since you posted, I've had other fish to fry lately.

For the CrewSystemsManagement image the game uses the .dds file type, a DXT5 file format, no MipMap, overall size is 2048x512 (that makes an image size of 1024KB over all). I wouldn't change these parameters (although I may have made the mistake of allowing MipMap production to have slipped in when saving, that was before I knew what they did and how to use them. Depending on when I made the file and if I updated the mod to correct this?! Sooooo, that can make a file larger than needed).

We used to think the .dds format took precedent over a .tga file, (and it does most of the time) but there are some instances this is not the case. Regarding the CrewSystemsManagement.dds file there are no .tga's for this file so what you have is what you get. As I said above, try to mimick whatever the game has as a stock image format, and try to keep the image size as small as the stock files. This game runs on a thread away from a CTD all on it's own, adding extra file sizes will really add to the instabilities of the game.

Thanks for the insight on dealing with the washing out of the original image when saving. Right off, I don't remember the size of the individual medals in the CrewSystemsManagement.dds image but their small. Finding a small image that one doesn't need to shrink down is a problem.

Yes I'd like to see your work.

[Jten]

DXT5
Well, butter my behind and call me a biscuit.
That is a lossy format so there is some compression going on but it has other advantages in the 3D world. Unfortunately, DXT5 encodes in 4x4 pixel blocks to a limit of 64 bits of color data per block. Push too much data into that block and stuff goes out the window. At this time I don't know the Alpha Channel boundaries. I have made a rough guess at them and made some of the medals a little larger (and thus modified the Alpha Channel) and they seem to show correctly but I'd like to test that a little more.
The medals with few colors like the Navy Cross or wide stripes like the Silver Star do better. The thin 1 pixel width stripes of the APCM are causing the problem (especially the blue and red stripes) and when I exported as that, my nice APCM colors went back to the mud brown stripe on the left hand side. But I have worked around that but it's a little higher at 1366KB instead of 1024kb. It seems to render OK on mine but I'm running dual cores. That is with a rework of all the US medals for sharper colors and details.
OK, as far as DDS files and TGA, some other game engines would in higher detail modes bypass the DDS and load from TGA depending upon a override setting. It's possible that the SH IV graphics that have DDS and TGA are using the TGA for higher graphics settings and the DDs for all other. The items being used from crewsystemsmanagement.dds are hardly high rez so that's probably why there is no setup for higher rez TGA.

I'd like to show you what I've got but there is a better DDS compression tool than the Photoshop plugins and there is a manual compression prep by loading one color channel into the alpha before export. I'd like to try those and test them in game a bit.

[CapnScurvy]

A "lossy"?

You graphic guys have the lingo!! I've called it something else (like #qo$"*F#t) or something like that when I would see the outcome!! Yep, the APCM seems to take the worst hit in quality when using PhotoShops Nvidia plugin for a DXT5 file format. I've noticed an .tga save does a pretty good job in holding the original quality BUT the game uses a .dds image for this particular CrewSystemsManagement image (no .tga at all). When I spoke about the game choosing which image to use (a .tga or .dds) when there is listed both in a particular file (with the same name), the .dds file usually wins out. I've checked this by marking one image with a red stripe through it, the other with a blue. The .dds file seems to hold precedence over the .tga almost every time. I believe this is a hard coded process since the menu_1024_768.ini file lists the .tga almost every time but the .dds image is the one shown in game.

You thought maybe the .tga is used for the high end graphics, (and you may be correct) but I don't think so. After a while of looking at how the game is cobbled together, these files and menu_1024_768 references (I believe) are just the "leftovers" of the SHIII game. The devs didn't have time to clean up their rewrites when Ubisoft cracked the whip on them to get SH4 out the door.

That's why the menu_1024_768 is such a mess when you look at it. There are soooooo many overrides and "inactive" parameters that one can barely understand what the heck is going on. There are images and files that were never used in the SH4 game (even with the "U-Boat Missions Addon") that just don't need to be there. Like the Data\Menu\Gui\Medals\"SH4Medals.dds" image. The stock game doesn't use these medals. This image was left over by the devs either by mistake (they just didn't have the time to use them), or they simply knew we modders would find them and put a mod together using them. I hope for those that look forward to the SH5 edition it gets a better shake than what this American version of an older German game engine received.

Speaking of the menu_1024_768.ini file. You had better get your noodle wrapped around a tutorial to understand what and how things work in the game. Placing images in game (at least the 2D ones) is done through this file. If you have an image that's too large or needs to be moved around a bit the menu_1024_768.ini file is the place to do it. This tutorial is the "holy grail" for understanding where and how things get placed in game. You can find it here in this THREAD. I wish there was more to it, but understanding what zAMBONI put together has helped me greatly! Just a little light reading for you this weekend.

[Jten]

Thanks for the link. That seems to be what I was looking for.